Paying someone for a month to hand carve some intricate wood with metal inlays costs a lot more than $50 for some old junk antique, even at china labour rates.
I've heard that selling fake illegal drugs (like passing off dried basil as cannabis in jurisdictions where the latter is illegal) is also illegal. Is the same true for illegal artifacts?
The pity is, some of the fakes are themselves exquisite pieces.
> A look-alike drug can be any substance that would lead a reasonable person to believe that the look-alike is the real thing, such as its color, consistency, dosage amount, shape or markings. Or a drug can be considered a look-alike if you imply or expressly represent that the look-alike is real. For example, a court can consider any statements you made in advertising or distributing the drug, whether you asked for money and how you packaged the look alike. [ibid]
---
[0]: https://www.skokiecriminallawyer.com/2013/01/look-alike-drug...
"The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935), by Walter Benjamin [1] is a good starting point on this topic. He was the first to ask what actually constitutes a work of art, if you can cheaply mass produce copies of it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Work_of_Art_in_the_Age_of_...
See: https://blog.britishmuseum.org/fake-antiquities-made-for-uns...
From this article:
> This is evidence for a side of the trade in antiquities which is rarely discussed – there are more fakes in circulation than genuine articles. It is easier and cheaper to make copies than it is to hire dozens of workers to look for originals. Fakes can also be conveniently complete, whereas almost everything from antiquity has been broken, either deliberately in episodes of destruction, or accidentally in the case of everyday items. There is also the simple economic truth of the laws of supply and demand.